An interview on the Armchair General talks with Dean ‘Rocket’ Hall, creator of the DayZ Mod for Arma 2 that's caused a sensation since its release. He describes how his background in the New Zealand Air Force helped him with the project, and discusses a little of what the future hold for the project.

It surprised me how little effort developers put into stopping griefers. I remember in BF1942 getting more annoyed at Dice than the teamkillers themselves, because dealing with them would be so easy. Killed a team-mate? Your next respawn is delayed one deployment cycle. Killed two team-mates? That's two cycles, or a minute IIRC. That gives legitimate players an incentive to be a bit more careful and gives griefing players a whole bucket full of frustration - a taste of their own medicine.

Well I don't feel bad about buying Arma II just for DayZ because I wanted it for a while now anyway. It's just that my computer was too slow until recently, so this was a good excuse.

It is clunky on a micro level, kind of like Battlefield used to be(worse, actually), but the environment..., running in 1080p with maxed out gfx is pretty amazing I must say. It's just soooo huge and detailed I often get distracted just looking at it. It's like a real chunk of the world in there. Way more impressive than Crysis IMO.

Also fully aware DayZ is alpha. I've played plenty of alphas before, so I know what to expect, it just seems like people are taking it too seriously and so it is more frustrating than normal. I bitch because that is how change is effected, and the 'griefers' are doing their share of preaching/bitching/whining on the official forums also.(which I am resisting making an account on heh.)

Still plenty of ways this mod could go, hopefully it's for the better.

Cutter wrote on Jun 10, 2012, 14:04:It's easy to fix the griefing aspect. It always boggles my mind that I've seen so few games use it. Just make it a strong disincentive to not grief. How? Glad you asked. Simply flag the griefer with a series of flags.

1 kill = Wanted - means anyone can attack him without incurring a Wanted flag. If he responds his flag escalates.

2 kills - Outlaw - same as wanted but now the game spawns mobs to actively hunt him

3 kills Villain - same as before but now the game spawns boss mobs to hunt him and advertises his position to other people. Perhaps even places a small bounty on his head to reward those who hunt him down.

Whilst it won't stop it, it'll sure put a major dent in it and make legit players not spam to avoid friendly fire too. The flags would also be on a timer for de-escalation - if the griefer somehow survives - but the timer only winds down if he's actively out and participating/hunting mobs in the game world. A MUD I used to play on long ago used to this great effect.

Not sure if you play it or not, but they used to have bandit skins for people that killed other players. Was a nice way to handle guys like this as you would take them out knowing they couldn't be trusted. Simple solution, but for some reason they removed it.

It surprised me how little effort developers put into stopping griefers. I remember in BF1942 getting more annoyed at Dice than the teamkillers themselves, because dealing with them would be so easy. Killed a team-mate? Your next respawn is delayed one deployment cycle. Killed two team-mates? That's two cycles, or a minute IIRC. That gives legitimate players an incentive to be a bit more careful and gives griefing players a whole bucket full of frustration - a taste of their own medicine.

I don't know how this would fit into Day Z as Arma2:CO hasn't been on sale yet. PvP shouldn't be out-right penalised as the risk is part of the game as I understand it. So killing a player shouldn't be a death sentence for yourself, like a wanted flag would be. But how else to do it? Hmm.

Day Z's biggest influence could well be the number of sales Arma 2 has racked up. I'm sure developers and publishers are looking at this and not only seeing the potential in the game play, but in the flexibility that Arma offers that results in people doing their work for them. Everyone's a winner.

I would give Day Z a lot more time than other games. It's an alpha version, and it was an experiment to begin with. It's not right for us to congratulate him on his experiment and then jump down his throat when a balance experiment goes wrong.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke

It's easy to fix the griefing aspect. It always boggles my mind that I've seen so few games use it. Just make it a strong disincentive to not grief. How? Glad you asked. Simply flag the griefer with a series of flags.

1 kill = Wanted - means anyone can attack him without incurring a Wanted flag. If he responds his flag escalates.

2 kills - Outlaw - same as wanted but now the game spawns mobs to actively hunt him

3 kills Villain - same as before but now the game spawns boss mobs to hunt him and advertises his position to other people. Perhaps even places a small bounty on his head to reward those who hunt him down.

Whilst it won't stop it, it'll sure put a major dent in it and make legit players not spam to avoid friendly fire too. The flags would also be on a timer for de-escalation - if the griefer somehow survives - but the timer only winds down if he's actively out and participating/hunting mobs in the game world. A MUD I used to play on long ago used to this great effect.

J wrote on Jun 10, 2012, 11:06:No, he's not surviving. He should have shot the troll and headed upstairs, presuming he had ammo.

Heck, even a quick shot to slow the troll down so the zombies snacked on his delicious corpse after he bled and passed out would have been good.

To try running away and then be vulnerable like that is asking for trouble.

I was just in a server where a guy was warned by a friendly sniper not to stand in an open field and he didn't listen. He was subsequently shot by another sniper.

Survival is not running away. It's about thinking on your feet and taking whatever action is necessary to survive.

If I encountered a troll like that I'd be grateful. Some will simply shoot on sight. This guy could be turned into bait whilst I made my getaway.

Yeah I think that was his first video, he 'improved' in the later ones. He shoots out their legs so they can't run.

Btw the music isn't simply dubbed in either, he is piping it into the game thru direct voice chat, so anyone within 30yards(?) can hear it.

TBH it wouldn't bug me so much except for 2 things. 1. He is posting those fucking everywhere, whoring desperately for attention. 2. He didn't even come up with the idea originally, because a similar thing happened to me before those vids were even made. A guy with a couple Z's following him runs by me like he needed help, so I killed the zombies and while I'm bandaging myself so I don't bleed out, he shoots me in the back. Of course, I now kill anyone I see doing that....but I don't like it.

I've kind of lost interest in DayZ but not because of the pvp. I don't have long play sessions so I have never teamed up with anyone else. It doesn't help that I don't have any friends that play it either. I'm paranoid of losing all the stuff I have scavenged (map, matches, hatchet, compass, knife) to some idiot so that's the main reason I don't seek out help.

I guess I could try to go to the military towns and airfields and look for gear but I did that on my last life. The M16 AIM I found I finally fired at a zombie and every zombie for half a mile came running and killed me.

It's also hard for me to not cheat in DayZ; if I know a bunch of zombies are alerted and coming to attack me I usually disconnect and log in again...

I've enjoyed what I've played of dayz so far. Chernarus is very big, even for 50 people. The mod really shows the limitations of arma 2's handling of close-quarters stuff, I guess, but it's pretty good nonetheless.

Cooperating with people you've just met is more fun (and safer) than lone-wolfing it. I haven't played enough to get killed by another player yet. Part of the problem is that you can't lower your sidearm, so looking at someone (for the 90% of people without trackir) = aiming at them. Hand-gestures help for distance communicating, like salute. There's another mod that adds more, (sam_handgestures I think), which should probably be incorporated.

Sneaking through mogilevka to scavenge supplies and someone drives past in a repaired car. The noise alerted every zombie in town and they ran towards him, thankfully missing my hiding spot, so I was able to scavenge in peace and all the zombies ended up 500 meters away from town chasing after the car till they lost interest.

There are other articles that elude to the fact that this is just the Alpha test using Arma 2 CO as the testing ground. Things said point towards it ending up as a standalone product like Iron Front Invasion 1944, but I would imagine that it will end up a standalone product using Arma 3 as the engine in the end. And cleaning up the netcode seems to be a priority for Arma 2 and Arma 3.